I recently discovered something. If you are knitting from written directions, and if what you are knitting has a certain direction it needs to face you should follw the directions from right to left instead of from left to right. Especially words, otherwise you have a mirror image of the word. I knew that when you read a chart you should read from left to right if youre knitting left handed. It never occured to me till a couple days ago to apply that logic to written directions too.

I was knitting a dishcloth with a tea cup on it and the handle came out on the left instead of the right and I knew what had happened. Then when I was knitting one that had words on it I realized I would have to switch the pattern around or the words would be backwards. SO I had to rewrite the pattern. for example: instead of, say, K3, P5, K2, P25, K3 I turned it around to read K3, P25, K2, P5, K3I came to one row that had K4, (MB, K1, MB, K3) 3 times, P3. At first I thought my brain would explode. Then decided not to over think it and just turned it to read P3, (K3, MB, K1, MB) 3 times, K4. It turned out perfectly.

Anyhow, just thought I would share in case my experience ( or the lack there of) helps anyone who hasn't discovered this yet.

Knitting Fairy

"Learning how to knit was a snap.It was learning how to stop that nearly destroyed me." Erma Bombeck

It took me years and years of trial efforts to work out that there is absolutely no knitting triumph I can achieve that my husband will think is worth being woken up for. ~Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

I'm new to the forums and found this topic. I am a self-taught lefty knitter. Thank you so much for posting this info about patterns! I'm working on a dishcloth right now, about 15 lines in and I was wondering if it looked like it was backwards. Now it makes sense! [!]